Information Handling System Thermal Management Enhanced By Estimated Energy States

Abstract

Thermal conditions at processing components disposed in an information handling system are estimated by applying conservation of energy and component power consumption so that discrete control of information handling system exhaust temperatures is more accurately maintained. For example, a PCI backplane communications card has its power consumption estimated based upon its width so that air flow through the information handling system is adequate to meet an exhaust temperature constraint.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]1. Field of the Invention[0002]The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system thermal management, and more particularly to server information handling system thermal management enhanced by estimated energy states.[0003]2. Description of the Related Art[0004]As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and / or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much in...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides a system and method for managing thermal constraints in an information handling system. It uses sensed temperatures, component power consumption, and cooling airflow to estimate the thermal conditions at different locations in the system. This allows for more accurate control of cooling and power consumption to manage compliance with thermal constraints. The invention has several technical advantages, including improved thermal management at discrete locations, reduced cooling fan acoustics, lower cooling fan power consumption, and protection of individual components and subsystems from thermal over temperatures.

Problems solved by technology

Without cooling airflow, server information handling systems concentrated in a rack will typically overheat leading to forced shutdowns typically needed to prevent damage to the processing components.

Typically, the power supplies in the rack cannot meet the power requirements of all of the server information handling systems in the rack operating at full power.

If cooling fans cannot provide adequate cooling airflow to maintain desired thermal constraints, then additional steps are generally taken to reduce the creation of thermal energy, such as throttling CPUs.

One difficulty with setting and maintaining thermal constraints is that exact thermal conditions within a server information handling system are sometimes difficult to discern since a large number of power-consuming components are usually included within the server information handling system.

The size of this safety margin relates to the amount of uncertainty regarding actual versus sensed thermal conditions, and generally results in greater acoustics and power consumption at the server information handling system.

However, if an end user replaces the installed PCI card or adds additional PCI cards, the thermal characteristics become unknown so that the user must manually configure cooling fan settings or accept sub-optimal thermal management.

Manual configuration of thermal parameters tends to be complex so that end users are likely to simply accept sub-optimal performance, resulting in a reduced end user experience.

In addition, even components that include temperature sensors sometimes fail to provide accurate sensed conditions, such as in the event of failure or during boot, when the thermal control typically runs on a “blind” hard-coded fan speed that trades off thermal risk and acoustics.

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